The Golden Locket (Unbreakable Trilogy, Book 2) (35 page)

‘I can’t be without Gustav, Crys.’ I drag my feet as she stalks through the streets as if she was born here. ‘I need to speak to him.’

‘Have patience. And dignity.’ She slaps my arm. ‘If he wants you, he’ll come to you.’

The city snaps into electric light as dusk falls. Lamps in windows, fairy lights round colonnades, dazzling arc lights rigged up beside loudspeakers pumping disco, jazz or rock from the corners of the busier streets and squares as the city revs up for tonight’s festivities.

‘Well, you know what they say. If you can’t be with the one you love,’ I remark glumly, ready to be sucked into the hustle of Piazza San Marco.

Crystal blows me a playful kiss.

‘Love the one you’re with.’

It’s dark now, or at least as dark as a city can get when it’s alight with flame and music.

I turn on my narrow embroidered kitten heels to wave at Crystal as the hotel taxi backs away from the quay to drop its other guests at their own parties, but already she’s been swallowed up by the traffic on the canal. I hoped she was coming with me to this ball, but she has dressed me, bewigged me, made me up and perfumed me, and now she’s abandoned me.

She’s also been tanking me up with some very strong gin-based cocktails while transforming me from ragamuffin to royalty in a silk brocade ball gown in the same emerald green as my eyes and set off by the five peacock plumes pinned to my powdered pompadour wig. The plunging neckline squeezes my breasts and pushes them to bulge over the bodice. My three-quarter-length sleeves are trimmed with creamy lace and a pair of emerald satin gloves cover my little bracelet. The only other jewellery is the golden locket, nestling at the base of my throat, another permanent reminder of Gustav, and some amazing dangling green glass earrings that Mrs Weinmeyer gave me earlier, insisting that I wear them tonight.

Over the ensemble Crystal has tied a green velvet hooded cloak, which is sewn onto the back of my dress like a weight to stop me floating to the surface.

‘Cinderella,’ Crystal murmured earlier in the water taxi as it joined the flotilla of other boats, gondolas and
vaporetti
taking guests all over the city. ‘Just make sure you don’t lose your glass slipper.’

‘Sans Prince Charming,’ I mumbled. The taxi thrust its gears into reverse as we came alongside the Palazzo Weinmeyer’s private jetty furnished with a golden canopy and carpeted in rich matching gold, lit by beacons the height of grown men, throwing flames into the air. Footmen stood to attention in golden frogged tailcoats and breeches.

‘These Weinmeyers sure know how to go to town!’ I whispered, glancing round at all the gilded accoutrements. ‘They have a Midas complex.’

‘Or Goldfinger,’ Crystal whispered back.

‘So am I the only person who isn’t painted like an Oscar statuette?’

‘No. There will be every colour of the rainbow in there. Now, before you enter the ball like a conquering heroine, hold still. I need to take a picture of you before you are ravaged by the festivities.’

The other guests on the boat, a motley mixture of devils and angels, virgins and executioners, had all stopped talking and were nodding and smiling at me.

‘Hold your mask by the edge here. Hide the ribbon for a moment,’ she urged as she held the phone up and illuminated me with the flash. ‘And look as if you own the place.’

Now she’s gone, taking the phone with her. Glowing away inside that phone’s memory is a vision in emerald green glittering with gold sequins, my mask half lowered like a yashmak so that it covers my mouth, my eyes wide and staring and sparkling with heavy make-up and unshed tears. Behind me looms the superb rose-ochre backdrop of the Palazzo Weinmeyer draped in gold flags, the striped mooring posts standing proud in the water, and a seething blur of humanity parading along the corniche above the landing stage.

What would Gustav think if he could see me now? What if he could see me through his telescope, far away in Europe? Is he worrying about me, what I’m doing, who I’m with? Or is that why he’s sent Crystal to watch over me? Is he regretting turning on me like that? Is he subsiding onto his favourite suede sofa in front of the window overlooking Central Park, remembering the feel of my lips on his, my mouth sliding down his chest, over his stomach, curling my tongue around him to pull him into my mouth? Will his hand go down to take hold of the hardness growing there, and will he wish that I was there, ready for him to come inside?

‘Welcome to Palazzo Weinmeyer!’

A matching pair of animated gold statues take my invitation and escort me into the marbled hallway and up a wide flight of stone stairs flanked by more flaming beacons throwing elongated and exaggerated shadows onto the gloomy oil paintings. I am ushered through an arch into a ballroom on the
piano nobile
which I wasn’t shown when I came here for dinner. The room extends along the entire width of the building, the Gothic-arched windows framing views of the Grand Canal crammed with flotillas of water craft bearing revellers.

My invitation is handed to two figures sitting on huge golden thrones who are also painted gold but swathed in white and gold togas and crowned with gold laurel leaves. My curtsy feels curiously natural in the whalebone corset and wide hooped crinoline of my dress. Crystal and I practised this in my bedroom earlier, and my hosts incline their heads in approval.

I search for some kind of friendly signal from this king and queen as they nod and tap my cheeks and shoulders in a kind of papal blessing, but the Weinmeyers are keeping up the act and like every other person in the city they are totally unrecognisable, their golden faces pocked with diamonds, their movements, like everyone else’s, stiff as marionettes’.

The long wall opposite the French windows is entirely mirrored, and the walls at either end are hung with thick, ornate tapestries. It’s not as large as the kind of ballroom you would find if you were visiting a stately home, and the two or three hundred people who are filing in make the room feel crowded and hot. The masked guests move slowly about in their costumes. The majority are dressed in the traditional eighteenth-century style, the women gliding in their long dresses, the men stepping self-consciously in their unaccustomed breeches, but there are plenty of more outrageous disguises here too, such as devils or animals. As the room fills to bursting point people have to turn stiffly sideways to make way for one another.

I am helped to my feet and given a large black goblet full of a spicy punch. I drink it down very quickly and programme my camera. I can feel my senses popping, goosebumps rising on my skin. There has to be some kind of amphetamine or opiate in the viscous liquid, maybe a weird mixture of both, because, as I press the camera to my eye, everything I see through the slightly steamed-up viewfinder starts to look as if it’s been outlined with thick marker pen. All the figures round me become clear and stark. Movement and sound are slower than seems normal, as if I’ve stumbled into a jungle where half-seen dinosaurs or mythical creatures lumber and flit in the shadows cast by creepers and trees.

I pan round the ballroom in video mode, holding the camera away from me, which not only stops it pressing the mask painfully into my eyes but makes it clear that I am working. I want to capture this as a dream-state where everyone is moving in slow motion in that shy, awkward early stage of a party before they are loosened up with drink, when they don’t know each other. Except they will never know each other, because tonight everyone remains a stranger.

When the music begins in earnest I can zoom in on individuals under cover of the dancing. As I pan back to the starting point I realise I must be hallucinating because the door where I came in seems to have been sealed up. It’s like being shut inside one of those jewellery boxes containing a tin ballerina spinning arthritically to ghostly wind-up music.

I move from my position by the wall and start to circulate, switching my camera back into still mode. Yet again I’m reminded of Pierre’s burlesque show, because this is not like a random party but a rehearsed play. It’s impossible to tell behind these masks, but everyone seems to be acting like friends rather than being genuinely acquainted.

All seems pretty tame so far. Nothing like the orgy the Weinmeyers told me to expect. I relax into my stride. I’m right at home. All I have to do is what I’m best at. Watching. I can take part if I like, but not until I’ve recorded what goes down at a madcap Weinmeyer ball. It’s all presented like a readymade painting.

I shoot and sway and mingle with the crowd, zooming in on the tilt of a chin or the courtly wave of an arm, the clacking of a painted mouth, a tight red smile, the unintentionally amusing sight of one person addressing another who is not listening.

A harpsichord begins to twang out some perfect period pieces. The chandeliers start to spin like glitter-balls. They must be on some kind of electronic circuit connected to the amplifiers. The effect is making a shifting kaleidoscope out of the sedate masked figures on the polished sprung dance floor, as they move like puppets into position and start to sketch the stylised steps of the waltz and the minuet. The third piece I recognise as the cotillion, another antiquated mating ritual disguised as a dance that Crystal and I practised earlier, odd couple that we are.

‘Cotillion comes from an old French word meaning petticoat,’ she puffed as she marked out the places in the middle of my bedroom. ‘It was a four-sided dance, precursor to the quadrille, and it was particularly popular at dances to showcase young girls coming of age. You lift your skirt, like this, and show your ankles. Very daring for the time.’

I wish she was here. Apart from anything else she could have held my camera for me when I was trying to have a drink. I’m already very hot. Perhaps she could have dressed as a man, in matching emerald green, and escorted me here? Why didn’t we think of that? What on earth is she doing now, anyway? Rocking on a chair outside my room, waiting and knitting, like a
tricoteuse
by the guillotine?

A heady perfume hovers across the mirrored ceiling, so that when I look up all the powdered or hooded heads nod and twirl as if they’re exotic birds making formations through cirrus clouds.

As well as the moving statues and the odd angel or goblin, most of the guests are in costumes like mine, exaggeratedly sexy versions of Casanova-era clothing. These would be absolutely perfect for Pierre’s purposes – whatever they are. Stop it! Stop it! I try to push thoughts of him and his brother out of my head, but the combination of the cumbersome headdress, the heat in this ballroom, the wine and the effort of steadying and focusing my camera is already wearing me out.

I scroll quickly through the catalogue of false faces, hands, gloves, fans, breasts, chins, legs, feathers, feet, until I’m dizzy. If someone could loop those images together, together with any video footage, this would be a sensational montage. Or the backdrop to a burlesque show …

I put the camera back into video mode and push myself across the polished parquet, using it to search through the sedately dancing crowd and the chattering people around the edges for someone familiar. But apart from Mr and Mrs Weinmeyer these are all strangers. Even if I did know them, I would never recognise them, because many of the masks have a mesh across the eye holes to conceal even that slight flicker of familiarity. All the faces are either masked or plastered in thick theatrical make-up.

The Weinmeyers’ wide-ranging dress code, which they outlined to me the other night, has been adhered to to the very last stitch. Although, from what they’ve told me about past balls, they seem determined that every last stitch will eventually be unpicked. They wanted people to arrive at this ball ready to discard all inhibitions, and partners, at the door. An even more extravagant, outrageous version of the Club Crème, in other words.

I continue to mingle, shooting and watching as breasts and chests begin to heave for breath, and feet occasionally trip as the dancers start to tire. The impression is that these are all statues, come to life. No human foibles or weaknesses or sins to worry about here. No manipulation, or persuasion, or sorrow, or happiness, because there is no emotion on these blank faces. They are automatons. Maybe the dress code should have been ‘sex toys’. Anyway they are coming to life now. A hidden switch has been thrown to send them into debauched mode until someone switches them off at the end of the night.

Some dresses are so low cut that breasts rest heavily upon the whalebone of the tight bodice, the red nipples exposed and positioned like cherries stuck onto white scones. The full skirts of the dresses are slashed at intervals and totally see-through when the wearer stands in front of the light.

The low murmuring of voices goes quiet as the harpsichord trails off. The room is jam-packed now. I’m squeezed among blank-faced swordsmen, duchesses, gladiators and wenches, all playing musical statues. They are waiting for the next dance, heads tilted expectantly, beribboned wig-tails bouncing with an invisible pulse, painted mouths curved in patient smiles. Gloved fingers resting on chins as if waiting for a signal.

A violin tests its strings, followed by the discordant screech of tuning up, and then the members of the little orchestra, who have been sitting blank-faced on tiny gilt chairs, raise their bows and wind and brass, and swing the music into a mad, galloping polka.

I try to sidle to the side of the room as everyone is urged to follow the pace of the dance. Because the room is so full there is no sense of formation, and although some pairs manage to get hold of each other it’s becoming more a group dance, or a Scottish reel. It’s impossible to tell if some of the guests are male or female, but the form seems to be that those who are obviously women wait their turn, swinging their hips, clapping their hands and stamping their feet, while the men rush around in a kind of circling dance, first face to face with the nearest partner, then turning their backs to face a new one.

Suddenly I’m grabbed and spun round relentlessly with all the other women until we are dizzy and breathless. This is becoming more like the Weinmeyers’ stated plan for the night. I manage to sling my camera on its strap over my shoulder and try to open the little purse Crystal gave me, so that I can put the camera in and keep it from banging against my hip. All I can do is enter into the spirit of it until the dance is over and retreat to my position on the sidelines.